


Visitant

by actizera (kitestringer)



Category: Oz (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-10-31
Updated: 2004-10-31
Packaged: 2018-07-25 18:03:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7542574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitestringer/pseuds/actizera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, he hears it when his eyes are open.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visitant

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LiveJournal for Hardtime 100 Flash Fiction Challenge #9: Nightmare on OZ Street.
> 
> Original notes: "As always, many thanks to rowanfairchild and maverick4oz for comments, suggestions, and encouragement. And Happy Halloween, everyone!"

Sometimes, he hears it when his eyes are open.  
  
 _Mr. Beecher,_ the voice says, because that’s how a little girl her age would address a man his age. _Mr. Beecher, wait!_  
  
Or _No!_  
  
Or _Remember me?_  
  
He lies on clammy sheets, sweating, afraid to move. “Just a dream,” he thinks. Sometimes he says it out loud, because he needs a real voice for contrast, to prove the other’s unreality. Just the remnants of a dream. His imagination. Guilt taking auditory form, courtesy of a few of his own typically uncooperative neurons.  
  
But...  
  
Sometimes he hears crying, and he knows it isn’t coming from Hill in the bunk beneath him, and he knows it isn’t coming from him, and he’s staring out into the darkness, eyes wide open — and still, he hears it. Quiet sniffles and a child’s sobs, coming from everywhere and nowhere, from the corner of the pod, from the vent in the ceiling, so close he can almost feel a wisp of breath against his ear.  
  
 _Mr. Beecher..._  
  
And then he sits up. Upright, eyes open, real noises, _reality._ The creak of bedsprings and the sound of his own breathing, sharp and clear. Hill is always silent but wide awake, his fearful distrust of Beecher almost a physical presence in itself.  
  
“Did you hear something?” Beecher whispers, expecting no answer. Hill is pretending to sleep.  
  
Beecher shivers, freezing in his damp clothes. He knows not to look anywhere — not in the mirror, not at the reflective walls, not in any corner of the room or even at the space next to him on his bed — so he stares down at his hands, concentrates on his knuckles turning white as he twists the blanket in his fists.  
  
He won’t look. He’s learned not to look.  
  
But when he feels a tug at the hem of his shirt, he forgets what he’s learned and twists around violently enough to shake the bed frame. He sees a flutter of movement — small white limbs, a glowing impression that fades gradually into the darkness, like the shapes you see if you look into a bright light and close your eyes.  
  
Breath frozen in his lungs, bowels cramping painfully, he realizes how badly he’s shaking when he jumps to the floor and his legs only barely support him. “Hill,” he says, loudly this time, with a tremor in his voice that would normally embarrass him.  
  
“ _What,_ man?”  
  
“Did you...” He can’t catch his breath to finish. With his back pressed against the pod door, he scans the room from floor to ceiling and sees nothing at all.  
  
“Did I _what?_ ”  
  
“See something,” Beecher spits out, finally. “Hear anything...weird.”  
  
“Yeah. Yeah, I did. I heard you waking my ass up in the middle of the night for no goddamn reason. _Again._ ” Hill yanks the blanket up over his head, muttering something about a “fucking lunatic.”  
  
Beecher turns and peers out into the common area. Here, now, with the rest of Em City lying at rest in front of him, mundane and silent; with the hacks lounging at their station, illuminated by a light that almost strikes him as warm; with the floor solid and cold beneath his feet and Hill snarking at him in his usual way — Beecher is inclined to agree.  
  
He’s a fucking lunatic. That’s really all there is to it.  
  
He walks to the sink to wash his face, the residue of fear still crackling along his nerves, heart thumping with excess adrenaline. As he stands in the mirror and watches the water drip from his beard, Hill reemerges.  
  
“And another thing: that shit with the covers ain’t funny, man.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Pulling the fucking covers off my legs while I’m sleeping? What the fuck is that? Just because I can’t feel my legs doesn’t mean I don’t get _cold._ You’re _sick,_ you know that?”  
  
The room goes dark and freezing again, and Beecher stumbles to the pod door, needing to get as close to a source of light and as far from his nightmares as he can. He braces himself for yet another night of pacing the length of the glass wall, staying away from his bed and all the dark corners.


End file.
